


I know the cold burns but the fire's worse

by sulkybender



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Addiction, Agni Kai (Avatar), Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Depression, First-season angry Zuko, Gay Jee, Gay Zuko (Avatar), Hurt Zuko (Avatar), Hurt/Comfort, I guess because it's October now and this is whump it counts right, Jee angst, Jee's past revealed!, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sick Zuko (Avatar), Sickfic, Slow Burn, Smut, Training Montage, Whumptober 2020, Zhao (Avatar) Is An Asshole, Zhao needs a smackdown, Zuko (Avatar) Angst, Zuko (Avatar) Needs Therapy, Zuko (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, alcoholic zuko, conflicted but responsible adult-figure Jee, sexy Jee, there will be smut, wild longing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 11,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26567143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sulkybender/pseuds/sulkybender
Summary: It's the worst idea Jee's heard in ages, sending this boy out to fight an agni kai. He’d need a week just to dry out, let alone resume training. And Zhao isn't just any challenger.Unfortunately, even half-pickled, Zuko is still gorgeous. And Lieutenant Jee, for better and mostly for worse, has never been able to say no to a beautiful man.--After six years of searching for the Avatar, Zuko has approximately no fucks left to give. Until he has to fight an agni kai with Zhao to save his crew.Slow-burn Jeeko has now reached the burn period, for all you hold-outs.
Relationships: Iroh & Jee (Avatar), Jee/Zuko (Avatar), Zhao & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 49
Kudos: 171
Collections: A:tla





	1. He’s a spectacle, isn’t he?

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here we are. Zuko is a nineteen-year-old sulky alcoholic (checks username; yes this makes sense), and Jee is a forty-something sailor with a trail of disasters in his wake. 
> 
> Zhao is still an asshole. 
> 
> Written at the altar of Nele and Naite_Laef's Zuko/Jee canon.
> 
> I feel the need to clarify that, while not an alcoholic, I have spectacularly bad coping mechanisms. So that's my window into this, folks. Enjoy.

It’s the same stupid port it always is. Half-frozen Ishihama, bleary red lamps and the choking smell of rancid blubber burning inside them, smog-colored snow. Lieutenant Jee and his uncle head to the trading stalls to haggle over supplies. In the early years Zuko would have gone with them, or at least waited for them to slip out of sight. Now he couldn't have cared if he tried. He takes a hard left into an alley and lets himself disappear.

It was Jee who introduced him to drinking. Jee had introduced him to drinking because he wanted something else. Zuko knew that and pitied him. He thought it was disgusting. And he thought Jee had chosen him because _he_ was clearly so disgusting, the refuse of the royal family. That he didn't have any other options. He was angry and insulted and then something loosened in him and he didn't care. And that was the start of everything.

Now Jee doesn’t look at him, mostly.

That was fine.

His closest option is a dingy bar, barely open. Technically it’s late afternoon, but in this part of the world, in this season, darkness starts early and extends late, reducing the light to a crawl. There are a few hard-looking men by the fly-spotted mirrors, avoiding their own dusty reflections. Zuko orders a bottle of sake and retreats into a corner to nurse his wounds, somewhere the light can’t hit him.

He likes drinking. He likes the burn, which is like firebending in a way that tears up his throat. It feels like power. The first glass never does anything for him. The second and third make his lips start to buzz. By the fourth drink, the buzz creeps through his face and into his mind, somehow. It brings silence, reduces the sharp-edged traffic of bad ideas to a hum.

Six years into hunting an imaginary adversary, Zuko is full of bad ideas.

The first drink Zuko had hated. He didn't understand then that the sting was the point, that there was a pleasure in punishment. Jee had poured him something sweet, a plum wine thick as syrup, and underneath the sugar was a sharpness like electricity. He gagged a little.

Jee's mouth had hooked up in a smile.

“Your first, sir?”

“No,” Zuko lied.

It was his birthday. Eighteen, which meant five years of hunting the Avatar, the only anniversary Zuko commemorated. Jee had invited him to his cabin for a celebratory drink, and Zuko had known from his nervous face what he really wanted.

Everyone knew the lieutenant's proclivities.

“It's all right, sir,” Jee said. “You'll find different people like different—”

“Shut up,” he said. “I said I know how to _drink._ ” 

Zuko tipped the glass back and finished it in one swallow. It was a flashy move, dumb, and the buzz consumed him, like someone had thrown lightning inside his head and shook it around.

“I meant no disrespect, sir.”

But Zuko hadn’t been angry, not really. He was scared.

It takes him too long to realize he isn’t alone. When he’s drinking Zuko tries to shut it all down, his frame of reference narrowing to the size of his glass. It’s stupid, he knows, dangerous even for someone who isn’t a banished prince with a growing list of enemies, but the constant vigilance is exhausting. He used to drink with one eye over his shoulder; now he drinks with no eyes at all.

So now, abruptly, there’s a familiar face watching him from the corner, a familiar set of cool, self-satisfied eyes doubling back to him in the mirror.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Zuko asks.

Zhao smirks.

“I'd ask you the same question, my dear prince, but I'm not really surprised.”

Zhao slides into the seat across from him. He’s smartly dressed, in clothing that hasn't been painstakingly let out and patched over the course of six years, or replenished on a slim budget. (Somewhere south of Omashu there's an Earth Kingdom boy wearing royal Fire Nation castoffs Zuko traded for a tunic that went below his navel.) Zuko hates him, but whenever he looks at Zhao he feels a kind of sartorial envy. The man knows what he's doing, down to his clothes.

“Fuck off, Zhao.”

“Ah ah.” Zhao wags his finger. “That's _Admiral_ Zhao.”

"You've been promoted?”

“As difficult as it may be for you to understand, dear prince: yes, some people do _progress_ in life.”

Abruptly he catches Zuko by the jaw and reels him in, examining his face under the murky bar lights.

“Such a pity,” Zhao says softly, his hot breath hitting Zuko’s skin. “Tell me, when was the last time you could see straight?” 

Zuko knows what he’s looking at. The flushed cast to his face, dead-ending veins in his nose and cheeks, his swollen eyes. He’s a spectacle, isn’t he?

Zuko jerks his head away.

“I said fuck _off_.”

“As delightful as it always is to engage you in conversation, dear prince, I'm here on business and not pleasure.” Zhao leans in. “I'm taking your crew.”

“You can't do that,” Zuko says immediately, not even thinking.

Zhao raises a finger.

“Ah, but I can. I'm assembling men for an expedition to the North, and I have orders straight from the top.”

“Liar,” Zuko spits. “My father wouldn't agree to this.”

“You haven't seen your father in six years,” Zhao says quietly. “What makes you think you have any idea of what he wants?”

It’s true, but Zuko can’t give him that. He ducks the question and presses on.

“You're not taking my crew. There's plenty of men in this port.” 

He waves his hand around vaguely at the men in the bar, bunched in their fur coats—most of them decommissioned sailors, most of them justly decommissioned. The worst part about these cold ports is the men who slop alcohol on themselves and sit there stinking like wet animals.

“Not the men I need.” Zhao leans in. “I need strategic minds, Prince Zuko. I need your uncle. As for the rest—” Zhao waves his hand—“that’s a package deal.”

“Go take some other crew,” Zuko hisses. “Take someone else’s uncle. Fuck up someone else's day, Zhao.”

“ _Admiral_ Zhao,” he says. He reaches for the teenager’s glass and spins it idly, enjoying himself. “You misunderstand me. My orders aren't to take anyone's crew. My orders are to take _your_ crew."

Zuko's stomach drops. He can’t feel his lips.

“My father would never—”

Zhao pushes the glass back towards him, sake slopping over the rim.

“This is becoming tedious,” he says sharply. “He would and he did.”

“He doesn’t—”

“You are an _embarrassment_ , Prince Zuko. You are an absolute embarrassment and I am here to take you out of commission.”

Zuko isn’t sure he can feel anything at all. He grips his glass until he can feel it pressing back, a ring of cold that lets him know he’s still alive, the world throwing up the same hard wall it always throws at him.

“I challenge you to an agni kai,” Zuko says.

Zhao laughs so hard he nearly chokes.

“In _your_ condition?”

“I don't have a condition!” 

This is a frankly ridiculous statement, and Zhao reacts accordingly. Zuko’s reputation precedes him. A circus wherever he goes, goggling eyes that make him drink just to spite himself and also, by some insane logic, to spite everyone else. Zuko knows this isn’t how poison works.

Zhao wipes tears from his eyes.

“Oh, this is delightful. You’ve charmed me. If you feel strongly about it, my dear prince, we’ll fight in a week. At the ship-yards. Dawn.” 

“I could fight you _now_ ,” Zuko says vehemently. “I could fight you _here_.”

“You think it's pity?” Zhao’s voice is soft and menacing. “It's not pity. What you've proposed would be a waste of my time. And a dishonor, frankly.” He leans in. “I don't fight drunks. Ideally I don't look at drunks. And I certainly wouldn't duel with drunks. So I’ll fight you, Prince Zuko, if you can manage to show up in a week’s time as something less than drunk.”

 _I'm not a drunk_ is what Zuko wants to say. Somehow the sentence dies in his throat. The buzz makes it hard to be upset, the buzz like his anger and hurt and power are distributed across ten thousand small fires, instead of the single point of rage that usually lodges in his chest, impatience and brutal disappointment like a mortal wound. He fingers his glass, considering.

“A week,” Zuko says.


	2. Entirely justifiable complaints

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to edit this chapter a little longer but y'all are so excited for the return of Jeeko content I could not in good conscience leave you hanging.
> 
> So: enter Jee.

Jee fumbles out of bed. He knows who it is immediately, of course, even if he hasn’t heard that impatient rapping for months now. It’s the prince's signature.

When he opens the door Zuko is shifting there in the dark, sake-smelling, tense.

“Can I come in?” he rasps.

Jee is touched, in a way. Normally the prince doesn’t bother to ask.

“Of course, sir.”

Zuko brushes past him, pacing. There’s that smell again, hard teenage perspiration and the despairing reek of a long night.

“I need to train.”

“Sir?”

“I need to _train_ ,” Zuko repeats, still wheeling around the cabin.

“It's about two am, sir.”

“Not now,” Zuko says impatiently. “Tomorrow. This week. This whole week.”

“What—”

“I'm going to fight an agni kai.”

Jee thinks quickly, flipping through names and dates, a long list of entirely justifiable complaints. Who had Zuko managed to offend recently? Was it the merchant in Port Kui whose wares Zuko had trampled? The owner of the restaurant where Zuko had refused to pay because he couldn’t remember drinking anything, and then vomited on the seats? Before they reached Ishihama, there had been some unpleasantness between the prince and the new helmsman—is that it?

“Sir, if Hailun is—”

“It's not with the crew,” Zuko snaps. “It's with Zhao. I challenged Zhao to an agni kai.” 

“Was that—wise, sir?”

He winces even as he says it, sure that Zuko is about to lose his temper. Instead the prince slumps onto Jee’s bed, face sinking into his hands.

“I can't go back on it,” he says, muffled. “I'd lose whatever honor I have left.” 

“When was the last time you firebended, sir?”

“I dunno.” Zuko looks down at his hands. The nails are blunt, edged with dirt. “A while.”

It had stopped mattering a long time ago.

Jee sits next to him.

“Why me, sir? If I may ask.” 

“The rest of the crew are idiots,” Zuko says flatly. “And I don't want Uncle to know.” 

“And General Iroh is just not going to notice that I'm training you?” 

Zuko flushes.

“I just want to explain less,” he mumbles.

It’s hard to reconcile this Zuko with the one Jee used to know, the well-muscled, brutally disciplined terror of the ship. He looks like that Zuko's deadbeat older brother, ugly rings under his eyes and the hint of a drunk’s belly at his waist. Jee remembers some of the stories that used to go around, soused old midshipmen who managed to set themselves on fire. The kind of story that always happened to somebody else's uncle.

All of which is to say: When Jee tries to imagine Zuko in his present state fighting an agni kai, the mental image he conjures up is of the prince self-immolating while drinking a beer.

It's the worst idea Jee's heard in ages, sending this boy out to fight an agni kai. He’d need a week just to dry out, let alone resume training. And Zhao isn't just any challenger. He's headstrong, imperious, but relentlessly powerful. His nickname for many years was the Battering Ram; men call him the Nattering Ram behind his back, which is the kind of nervous joke you make when you're annoyed by someone and also terrified.

Unfortunately, even half-pickled, Zuko is still gorgeous. And Lieutenant Jee, for better and mostly for worse, has never been able to say no to a beautiful man.

“I'll train you, sir.”

The hard gold of his eyes makes Jee wince. He's an idiot, Prince Zuko, but he's also smart and penetrating, with a glance that seems to cut you open.

“And what do you want in return?” Zuko asks.

“Nothing, sir.”

The hard eyes again. Zuko probably knows what the real answer is, even if he's—polite enough? resigned enough?—not to humiliate Jee by drawing it out of him.

The teenager gets up effortfully, his breath catching on some unexpected pain. There are the changes in him Jee can see and there are the changes he can't, the ones he worries about.

“There will be something,” Zuko says.


	3. All the old disasters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Training begins, but so do other problems.

He had been cracking up in the days before. There was something about Zuko's birthday that always felt like a mockery, chased so closely by the anniversary of his banishment. The crew was used to the prince vanishing into his cabin then, on the day itself, refusing food and sitting in meditation for long hours, cross-legged and cramped.

Leading up to his eighteenth birthday, it was all the same but worse. He was petulant, intolerable, and then—unexpected but worse—he was silent.

Jee had wanted to do something special for him. Zuko was too hard on himself—too hard, _period_ —and Jee thought that a few stiff drinks and a collegial talk might cheer him up. He was going to hit his twenties soon without ever having been a child. The idea made Jee's heart hurt.

So he asked Zuko to stop by his quarters, the night before he turned eighteen, and shockingly, the prince showed up. He was pale, his hair mussed, with the imprint of his futon marking the half of his face that wasn’t already branded. Jee bowed and led him to his little table, the wine and porcelain cups like the setting for a play, with all the care and artifice that implied.

“Happy birthday, sir,” he said.

Zuko settled into a chair, examining one of the cups.

“Is this from Uncle’s set?”

“What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, sir.”

The look of worry on Zuko’s face was sweet. It made him seem very young, worrying about stolen teacups instead of whether he would ever be welcome in his own country again.

The teenager turned the cup in his hand.

“What was it like,” he said suddenly. “When you were eighteen.”

Jee considered. There were many different directions this conversation could take— _I was being raised by my terrifying uncle, I was an asshole, I was hounded by desire_ —and at least half of them went scrabbling down a canyon toward certain death.

“It was the end of my first year in the Fire Navy,” he said.

Zuko frowned.

“You joined at seventeen?”

“I lied about my age, sir.”

“You really wanted to be in the Navy.”

“Not quite, sir.” Jee hesitated. “Home wasn't exactly a pleasant place to be.”

The lieutenant let the words hang there for a moment, suspended. He could see by the cut of Zuko's mouth that he wanted to ask, also that he wasn't going to. It would invite too many questions about the prince’s own childhood.

In an act of mercy, Jee reached for the plum wine.

“You'll like this, sir. It's a sweet wine.”

“I'm not a child, lieutenant.”

 _You are_ , Jee wanted to say. Instead he poured a little into Zuko's cup.

“I'm not a child either, sir,” he said. “You don’t need to be a child to enjoy something sweet.”

—

There isn’t anything like privacy on a ship, let alone a ship this small. But for their first session Zuko tries to arrange for something like discretion. He asks Jee to take the watch, all of it, and they meet in the darkness of the stern. It’s the boundary-world between morning and night, near three o’clock.

He had expected something like clarity to come from his first day without drinking, but instead it’s a world that’s always subtly wheeling, dizziness and a too-dry mouth. Inside, the sharp edges that alcohol blunts are cutting into him again, and Zuko has the admittedly fantastic notion that if someone sliced him open they would find twin dao blades lodged in his chest.

 _So that was the problem all this time_.

Zuko has always found it easier to understand a world that’s wholly physical.

They lock forearms and it starts.

Jee is in better shape that Zuko expected for a man of his age, although he isn't sure what he could have expected, given that the male examples of physical fitness in his family are limited to his father and his uncle. Jee has a hard chest and something like a weightlifter's stomach, not heavy but dense, and the meaty shoulders of someone who spent his formative years scaling masts and carrying anchors around. There's a trail of gray hair at his chest that Zuko tries not to follow.

What strikes him most is the sense of _discipline_ Jee carries in his body, the thumbprint of it in his muscles and his bearing. It makes him eye the man with something like envy. 

“Maintain your root, sir.”

“Don’t talk to me about my fucking root,” Zuko growls.

“I'll stop talking to you about your root when you stop breaking it,” Jee shoots back. “Sir.”

They circle each other, Zuko trying to fix his feet to the planks as he moves, but the ship seems lopsided, the deck migrating slowly into a wall. A burst of flame unravels in his face. Zuko ducks, but barely.

“Zhao's strength is in his legs,” Jee says. “He'll advance on you and try to sweep your legs out from under you every chance he gets. Don't give him a chance, sir.”

Now there's a twist of flame at his wrists. He lunges forward, close to the ground, and nearly has Jee pinned. He smells, not unpleasantly, like turpentine.

“Excellent, sir.” 

Zuko is fighting, but he's also fighting to stay upright, to resolve the several Jees in front of him into one single, battle-able Jee, instead of the shifting ghosts that flit across the deck. Last night he heard his father's voice—he knew it wasn't a dream, it was real, in his ears—and then his mother's, which was worse. No one told him this about drinking, that when you quit you keep the company of ghosts. It's the revenge Zuko's mind is carrying out for the months he kept it bound and quiet in a corner of his body he never touched.

He bursts out of a low crouch, thrusting the energy of his momentum into the fire he throws at Jee's head. The shot lands so wide it’s laughable—he picked the wrong Jee, he should have gone with the one on the left—and when it's finished Zuko skids and lands on his side. He isn't hurt, but he's had the breath knocked out of him, and for a little too long he curls on the deck, listening to the rush of the ocean.

“You're all right, sir.” 

When he hears his father it's all the old disasters. He's trash, he's too delicate, he's an embarrassment. When he hears his mother she's telling him things that don't make any sense, words in a language he can't decipher, but he recognizes her voice. Being that close to speaking with her, to hearing her, without hearing her at all, is the worst thing he can remember.

Under all of it, like a fishing line: the compulsion to drink. He feels the tug of it no matter how he moves. The hook's in his heart and he’ll never shake it now.

“I know I'm all right,” Zuko says.


	4. Elusive at best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love season-one Demanding Zuko.

Hiding three-am fire fights on the deck of a small ship is probably a little easier than hiding a full-grown dragon onboard, but not by much. After breakfast on the second day of training, Iroh pulls him aside.

“Lieutenant,” he says. “May I have a word?”

It’s the moment Jee’s been dreading. He follows the general to his quarters. There’s a stick of incense burning lightly on his desk.

“I understand that you’ve been training my nephew,” Iroh says.

Jee nods.

“Yes, General. At his request.”

Iroh has a remarkable expression on his face, uncertainty folding into gratitude. He presses Jee’s hand.

“I cannot tell you how relieved I am,” Iroh says. “For so long I thought he had given up hope.”

For a moment the absurdity of Zuko’s situation strikes Jee freshly, as it still can after six years: sentenced to circle the earth on a broken-down ship until he catches a ghost that, if it does exist, would almost certainly kill him. Who wouldn’t lose hope? Wasn’t it the sane thing, really?

“I’m glad he hasn’t, sir,” Jee says.

“He's very talented. He always has been, even if he's been too intent on comparing himself to his sister to recognize it.”

 _Is_ Zuko talented? It’s surprisingly hard to answer. He has power that’s marvelous to be close to—exhilarating, even, like breathing in air that’s almost too cold to swallow. But he doesn’t have the nuance or patience to manage it, and who knew how much of it was just teenage masculine energy, pure upset and horniness that would wear off as Zuko got older and more reconciled to the world.

Jee hopes Zuko gets older. 

"He's a promising young man,” Jee says generously. “A very... _forceful_ bender.”

Iroh sighs. “He doesn't exercise it enough. I believe his pent-up chi is contributing to his problem.” 

This is so indulgent an explanation for Zuko's descent into flaming alcoholism that Jee cannot hold his tongue.

“Sir, it may not be my place to say—”

Iroh waves his hand.

“Please, Lieutenant. Speak your mind.” 

“Why not stop, sir?” Jee’s words come out in a rush. “Dock in a nice town, dismiss the crew, find some place that isn’t full of cold and salt. Years of constant travel in search of an adversary who's elusive at best... I think they’ve taken their toll on Prince Zuko.”

The general looks at him sadly, almost amused.

“Have you considered, Lieutenant,” Iroh says softly, “what it would mean for us to stop? Prince Zuko has amassed a long list of enemies—some he's inherited from his father, others he's managed to pick up, especially over the last year.” Iroh trails off, stroking his beard, perhaps considering the man Zuko had knifed in a bar-fight back in Imāto. “I cannot guarantee his safety if we dock. We have no royal guard, no financial means to provide for his protection. For some time now I've seen this ship as a means to an end, Lieutenant. The end is not to capture the Avatar, but to keep my nephew safe.” 

“But he's destroying himself, sir,” Jee blurts out.

Months into cleaning up Zuko's mistakes, or quietly making them disappear with a little discretionary spending, this is the closest they've come to discussing the problem directly. Zuko is an embarrassment, but he's also a victim, and Iroh has trouble disciplining him for something the old man—gods help him—still appears to believe Zuko will develop the wisdom and restraint to outgrow.

“I can't protect him from everything, Lieutenant,” Iroh says smoothly. “I protect him from forces I can control.”

“I just think it's time for a change, sir.”

“I couldn't agree more,” Iroh replies. "That's why I'm so delighted to see you training with him.” He reaches for Jee's arm, squeezing it lightly. Then he takes out his brush and ink stone, signaling that the conversation is over.

For the first time Jee can see some of Zuko's hardheadedness in his uncle, a man he does not otherwise resemble. The walls of Ba Sing Se, Jee thinks as he heads to his quarters, have nothing on Iroh's impenetrable optimism.

—

In the evening there's the familiar pounding on Jee's door.

“Sir?”

“I don't want to sleep.”

Jee blinks at him.

“Talk to me,” Zuko says. “Please.” 

Jee gestures tiredly with his hand and flares the oil lanterns to life. The prince settles on the edge of the bed. His face is red, slick with sweat, exhausted with pain. He looks very small.

“What do you want me to talk about, sir?”

“Anything,” he rasps. “Any fucking thing.”

When Jee looks at him, his palms ache. He wants to touch those shoulders, lay his hand on Zuko's thigh. He wants to curl the teenager into his chest until the shaking stops, because Zuko's nothing but shaking, a tremor running through his hand that he tries to hide, badly.

“Would it help to—to be near me, sir?”

Normally this where Zuko's eyes would narrow, the hard gold trained on him again, but tonight Zuko is spent. He looks confused.

“Why would that help?” he demands.

“Sometimes, sir, it helps to be near a friend.” Jee pats the space next to him on the bed. Zuko shifts over hesitantly. Even if the lanterns went out Jee could map him out tonight: a tang of perspiration and fear.

“There's something wrong with me,” Zuko says, wiping sweat from his neck.

“This isn't uncommon, sir. It happens to everyone. It's called withdrawal.” 

“Everyone,” Zuko repeats. He shifts a little closer, until they're not quite touching, although the distance is nothing to Jee, who feels his margins outlined in fire. “When does it stop?”

“It can take a few days or more. It depends on, ah, how much you need to withdraw from."

Zuko looks so miserable that Jee can't help it. There's the itch in his palms and his hand shoots out, resting firmly on the prince's shoulder. Zuko inhales, closes his eyes. Jee can feel the tremor, one long shuddering line from the base of his spine to the tips of his fingers. It's a hard judder, worse than Jee had expected; Zuko is masking it well.

Jee takes his other hand and starts kneading Zuko's shoulders, fingertips seeking out the knots. Under his robes the prince’s skin is slick with the kind of sweat that smells like sickness. Zuko winces and sinks into him, letting out a slow hiss.

“A friend of mine went through something similar, sir,” Jee says, kneading intently. “This helped him, when he had the shakes.”

“A friend,” Zuko says, the slightest emphasis on the word.

It’s that cruel intelligence again, probing. The way he grew up, Zuko probably feels out weaknesses and wounds by instinct. Jee tries not to take it personally.

“He was an older officer in the Navy, sir.”

“And he was a drunk.”

Jee's fingers pause.

“He'd had a hard life, sir.”

Zuko scowls.

“He was a drunk, sir,” Jee agrees.

“Don't stop,” Zuko orders. He bites his lip as another wave comes up his spine and Jee pulls him a little closer, grounding him.

“He was a drunk,” Zuko continues. “And I'm a drunk. I don't know why everyone tiptoes around it like I'd bite their heads off.”

“Because you would, sir.”

Instead of flaring up, Zuko nods, looking pleased.

“I would,” he says.


	5. A few mistakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four, to be exact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! I'm sorry for the delay--my day job is trying to kill me and my soul is weary and sad. I have catching up to do on responding to comments on my stories, but please know that I've read every one and they mean the WORLD to me. 
> 
> And someone added me to a collection! That's so cool. I love you guys.
> 
> Slow burn's gonna light up soon, kids.

1.

On the night before his eighteenth birthday, when Zuko reached again for the bottle. Jee's hand settled on his thigh.

“You might not want to have more, sir.”

Zuko froze. His face was white and very small, somehow, like he had retreated somewhere deep inside himself.

When he spoke, his voice was painfully quiet.

“Don't touch me.”

Jee yanked his hand back, face burning.

“Sir, I—I hadn't intended—”

“Don't ever touch me,” Zuko said.

He got to his feet, stumbling a little, not tipsy but _furious_. Before Jee knows it, the door is closing on him and he's gone.

It's just Jee in a room, with two unfinished cups and an open bottle of wine, alone with his expectations and his own stupidity. It's nothing new.

2.

The mistake Jee had made at nineteen was believing you could, even in the Fire Navy, be yourself with discretion. It took him a long time to accept that _mistake_ wasn’t quite the word, not for something you don’t regret. For years he slipped away on shore leave in plain Earth Kingdom clothes—an unexpectedly sexy costume—and fucked men in backwater towns. He spent days on end being shoved into walls, feeling up older men who knew what they were doing. Somehow this never fed him. He came back aroused and hungry every time.

At thirty-one, well on his way to admiral, Jee made a move on a fellow officer. There was nothing special about this man. He was firm-jawed and conventionally handsome, a standard-issue Fire Navy heartbreak waiting to happen to some demure Fire Nation girl, the future absent father of demure Fire Nation kids. He was, in other words, only ordinarily ravishingly. But Jee had seen the way the man watched him, like he wanted to swallow Jee whole.

On a quiet night when the man was on watch, Jee slipped him a note. He didn't stay to watch him read it. Over the thumping of his heart as he turned the corner he could hear the crinkle of the paper opening, and it felt like someone was pulling back his skin.

At the appointed time, deep in the hold, Jee opened the door and folded. Someone took out his knees and he fell hard, hands scraping the dirty floor. He couldn't see—being bludgeoned didn't help, the blood trickling into his eyes—but he understood immediately what had happened. He had been stupid, and there are errors you can't recover from.

One officer yanked him back by the hair, and another officer, with a soft shick of his knife, sliced off his topknot. Then they kicked him in the stomach until he stopped moving.

When Jee woke up, the note was crumpled on his chest and his insignia had been peeled away. It was like being mugged, robbed of his life, but he was the one who had done it.

3.

The dumbest thing he'd done was steal the bottle. At night Zuko picked the lock and took the wine while Jee was on watch.

At first Zuko thought, vaguely, that stealing the bottle was the vengeance he'd wanted, the point he had to prove. It meant he wasn’t too young, he wasn’t under anyone’s control, and Jee couldn’t have whatever he wanted.

That was what he’d thought it meant, this dumb little covert operation. Once Zuko had it in his hands, sitting at the foot of his bed, he understood that he didn't know what the point had been at all, which he found humiliating enough that he decided to finish the bottle. He tilted his head back.

It was syrupy sweet, sweet enough that he could tell himself in the morning, vomiting into a bucket, that it was the sugar that had turned his stomach. He scrubbed the floor on his hands and knees and kept to himself all day, and when his uncle asked Zuko mumbled something about being seasick.

It wasn't untrue. He was sick of everything now.

4.

The next time they reached shore Zuko found a quiet bar and asked for something strong. He did this because he didn't know what to ask for, any of the words for what he wanted. His heart was in his ears—he could feel the bartender laughing at him, everyone's eyes pressed against his face—and then he drank and the burn destroyed everything.

It was glorious.

And if a few hours later there was someone else's blood on his knuckles; if he was being pulled, vomiting, into a dinghy; if he couldn't stop laughing in a high-pitched voice that wasn't his; if his uncle's voice was a disappointed blur: That was fine.

He couldn't feel anything, and that was fine.

It was like one of those riddles his uncle loved so much, an impossible question whose answer made no sense.

How do you get off a boat doomed to circle the world forever without ever getting off the boat?

Drink.


	6. Like a good co-conspirator

On the fourth morning there's a bruise on his face Jee's not supposed to notice, and a cut that looks like it stings. So Jee says nothing, like a good co-conspirator, and watches Zuko circle his arms stiffly, warming up.

Lieutenant Ouyang is who he thinks of. Ouyang, who used to navigate the world in pain until drinking took the edge away.

Of course, when all the edges were gone there was nothing left of him.

“Sir, you can't just pause like that.”

“I'm thinking," Zuko snaps.

“Think faster, sir.” Jee moves into the space, disarming Zuko easily and taking him by the wrists. “Throw up a block. Keep it ready. Don't leave anything open for him, sir, or he'll occupy it.”

“Or he'll occupy it,” Zuko says, mocking. He yanks his wrists free and scowls.

He's been insufferable today, but Jee can tell it comes from pain. Whenever it's Jee's turn to strike, the prince stands with his hands down almost to his waist, his whole body shaking. Forget an agni kai—he looks like a well-placed candle could wipe him away.

“Sir.”

Zuko looks at him, impatient, gorgeous.

“Sir, I'm sorry.”

It's the longest moment Jee has lived through in years, watching the words work themselves through the boy's face as he figures it out. Zuko's a smart kid; he doesn't need to ask. When he understands, there's no expression at all, like his face has dissolved/been washed away.

“Shut up, Lieutenant.”

“Sir—”

"I don't want to talk about it.” Zuko massages his shoulder, ready to move past it, and then he pauses. He meets Jee's eyes.

“It wasn't your fault.”

“Sir, respectfully—”

“I don't want to talk about it. I want this conversation to end at ‘it wasn't your fault.’”

General Iroh has a history of describing his nephew in frankly unbelievable terms: kind, gentle, sweet, brave. Adjectives that generally make Jee wonder if the General has mistaken his nephew for a tiny woodland animal. This is the first time in six years Jee's seen Zuko behaving anything like kind towards him. This is real kindness and charity, this absurd, impatient claim the prince is making. There's no reason to do it other than respect for Jee's feelings.

If Jee is honest with himself, he’s been doing penance for his decision for a very long time. He’s hunted Zuko down in bars and dragged him home after blackouts, Jee taking his feet while Iroh took his head. He’s helped clean the sick off his face and washed the crust from his clothes. He’s ended fights and defended the prince’s reputation in ports and mediated with his crew in infinite patience. He’s crept away quietly at meals to sweep Zuko’s room for hard liquor. And now he’s training him for an agni kai, because it’s what Zuko wants and it’s something he can give him, even if this is just as mortally dangerous as shoving a bottle into his hands.

The thing is, it will never be enough penance because penance doesn’t work—it has never, to Jee’s knowledge, successfully reversed time—and because Jee loves Zuko, this rash, inconsiderate, beautiful boy. The penance will never be enough because what Jee really wants is to fold that damaged body into his arms until the shaking ends.

“The dizziness stops, sir,” Jee says finally. “If you hold out.”

The prince looks at him with something like gratitude.

And then they fight, and it's the umpteenth phase of whatever fight the prince has always been fighting, forever.

—

They're sitting together on the bed, Jee kneading Zuko's shoulders in as workmanlike a way as possible. He keeps a running list of adjectives in his head, reciting them soundlessly: collegial, professional, restrained. It's a normal day and his hands are all over the sexy crown prince of the Fire Nation, in a completely normal, ordinary way.

Right.

He hates the clammy sadness in Zuko's face, the darkness under his eyes from lack of sleep. If he had the nerve Jee would volunteer to stand watch over him, to wake him up when a nightmare took hold of him. He wants to be the one to bring Zuko back to the world.

“Sir, what did Zhao say to you?”

“Admiral Zhao,” Zuko says absently. He reaches back and positions Jee’s hand a little lower, between his shoulder blades.

Normal, normal, normal.

“Admiral Zhao,” Jee agrees, trying to speak like his breath wasn’t just knocked from him, and waits.

“He said he’s taking my crew.”

“Can he do that, sir?”

“He said my father told him to.”

“Isn’t that…” Jee trails off, unsure how to frame the question. “Isn’t that what you _want_ , sir? To stop?” 

“No,” Zuko says immediately. “Not like this.” 

“Do you think it might be best, sir, to see this as an opportunity?”

“Do you _want_ to go with Zhao?” Zuko demands.

This isn’t really the reaction Jee was expecting. He’s been thinking of Zuko as an angry boy whose toys were being taken away, but is it possible he… _cares_ about the crew? about their welfare under someone like Zhao? about _his_ welfare?

It isn't impossible. 

“No, sir. Of course not.”

Zuko shakes his head. He lets himself fall back slightly, resting his weight on Jee's chest, and just like that, Jee has gone from working the knots out of the teenager's shoulders to holding him, almost. He's afraid to breathe.

“I'm just so fucking _tired_ ,” Zuko says. His voice cracks.

“You can rest, sir.”

What he means is _you can rest here, with me, please, yes, my God._

 _“_ I can’t,” Zuko says. “If I rest he wins.”

“If you don't rest, sir, he also wins.”

He makes a face, gorgeous brat.

“You're a depressing person, Jee.”


	7. Tar and smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The world is so shitty, please have some smut.

When he finds Zuko drinking, it's too late.

It's the fifth day of training. Jee looks for him in his cabin after he doesn't show up at practice, expecting to find him with his face planted in his pillow, not finishing off a bottle of brandy. The door to his room isn't even locked. Jee finds himself angry first about this—not that the prince is ruining himself with stolen liquor, but that he's dumb enough to do this with the door open.

“You don't have to do this, sir.”

Zuko is laughing, but also crying so hard it’s like dry-heaving.

Before he knows what he's doing, Jee has his arms around him, mouth fastened on his neck. He feels Zuko go slack. Touch tranquilizes him. The bottle drops.

The heat of him is delicious. Jee's calloused hands run over him, exploring his body, sliding down the milk-white skin of his back. Jee makes soft stricken noises as he does.

“My god my god my god,” Jee mumbles.

Zuko runs his hands down the older man’s chest, tucking his face into a field of wiry gray curls. Jee is kissing every inch of him with his warm mouth. He's reeling.

Hot breath in his ear.

“You don't have to do this either, sir.” 

“I want to,” Zuko rasps.

He has a steady face, and Zuko trusts him. He has a trustable body. When Zuko looks at Jee his heart thunders in his throat and ears.

“Fuck me.”

Jee chokes.

“Sir... Do you know—”

“I want you,” Zuko says, his voice almost gone.

Jee smells like tar and smoke and he isn't bad-looking, really. He's the last spit of land Zuko sees before the world stops making sense.

Jee worships every inch of Zuko, lips brushing his neck, his wrists, the undersides of his palms. He’s beautiful. It’s unbearable touching him, almost as bad as not touching him. Zuko climbs into his lap, nestling at first and then straddling him, making Jee moan as Zuko’s thighs brush against his hard cock.

“My god,” Jee says. His voice is all wind, too stunned for sound.

Zuko flicks his hips hesitantly and then, Jee’s hands holding his ass, kneads into him. He works up a rhythm.

“My _god_ , sir.”

Jee pulls him in, burying himself in the prince’s mouth. He tastes like brandy and bad rice wine, the dregs of whatever half-empty bottles Zuko’s found on the ship or scrounged from private rooms. Jee’s heart stings. He pulls back.

“Do you want this, sir? Are you sure?” 

The cold finds its way back into Zuko’s eyes.

“I’m not a child, Jee.”

“But sir, you’re not—” Jee breaks off, largely out of self-preservation. _You’re not well_ , is what he wants to say. Zuko isn’t drunk but he’s, well, Zuko: angry and fragile and easily overcome by desires he doesn’t know how to think through. He’s a lot like Jee at nineteen. The lieutenant runs his hand over Zuko’s scalp, trailing down into the scar.

Zuko waits.

“What I mean, sir,” Jee says.

“Yes?”

“I didn’t think anyone would want me again.”

Zuko’s eyes widen, and for a moment Jee thinks the prince has been stabbed in the back, somewhere he can’t see. It takes him a while to understand. The words are too close to what Zuko feels, too sharply tangent to what he thinks about himself.

“I’m old, sir,” Jee says. "I’m not what I used—”

Zuko kisses him fiercely, with some bite in it.

“Shut up,” he says. “Self-pity doesn’t become you, Lieutenant.”

Then he grabs Jee's cock.

It's like being slammed by an unexpected wave, and Jee crumples immediately, the breath knocked out of him.

—

Later in bed, tucked into the curl of Jee’s body, Zuko runs his fingers over him. It's a veteran's body: sunburn, windburn, frostbite, scars. There’s a waxy divot on his left side, below one rib, where someone burned him too deep for the flesh to come back. Zuko could ask about it, if he wanted to, and Jee would tell him, even though he’s never talked about it before. But he doesn’t ask, and so Jee doesn’t.

“I like you because you've been through a lot, and you're strong,” Zuko says finally, still having the conversation Jee started hours ago. “If I wanted to fuck a sad old man I had other options.”

Jee presses his mouth into the crook of Zuko’s neck. He won't say something stupid if his mouth is shut, or do something stupid, like bawl. His hands ease down the prince's body, feeling the scars Zuko doesn't talk about—the flare of rutted skin where someone dragged their nails deep, the slick purple burns shaped like a grown man's thumb. The difference between his scars and Zuko's is that Jee's are mainly what life did to him, and Zuko's are a brutal record book of what people did to him.

The teenager clenches his fists abruptly, his whole body tensing. For a moment Jee is afraid the seizures are back.

“Fuck, Jee. I almost did it.”

Jee knows what he means.

“You can do it again, sir.”

It’s ludicrous, Jee knows, wrapped naked around Zuko and still addressing him like his naval superior, but what else is he supposed to say? He can’t imagine using Zuko’s name, even if he’s fucked him.

Zuko is shaking his head.

“I can't, I can’t,” he moans. “It was too hard.”

“You can get through anything in small pieces,” Jee says. “It's just one day, sir. And I'll be here.”

There's the crazed laugh again.

“What does it matter, anyway?” Zuko says, and then answers his own question. “It doesn't matter. He's going to kill me.”

He laughs, choking.

Jee kisses the back of his neck.

“Do it for yourself, sir. Don't do it for anyone else.” 

Zuko is silent.

“If I was doing it for myself, I wouldn't be sober right now.”

Jee thinks about drunk Zuko, the maniacal smirk on his face, the way he tends to sob abruptly and the dead look in his eyes when morning hits, and he considers that if sober Zuko ever met drunk Zuko, ever really knew him, he wouldn’t do it to himself again. Drunk Zuko did not go around having a good time; it’s just that sober Zuko doesn’t remember any of it.

Still, Jee understands wanting to vanish.

He pulls Zuko's face to his, thumbs tracing the line of his jaw.

“I don’t want you to die, sir.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything.


	8. I’ll burn something you care about

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends! I know it's been a while. I promise the story will be finished--it's all outlined--I've just been staggering under work and some family sadness. Here's more Vulnerable Jerk Zuko and sexy Jee.

Zuko wakes up stiff in someone else's bed, smelling like someone else's life. There's a rough, warm hand at his back, just going over his skin, thumbing the ridges in his spine. He shudders and then he's more awake than he wanted to be, pain crawling up his stomach and then stabbing. He falls off the bed and vomits.

Jee climbs over the side of the bed, warm hands easing him up, pulling back his hair.

“Sir,” he says, in his infuriatingly calm voice, as if they've just passed each in a corridor.

Zuko keeps choking onto the floor until he's retching.

“You're all right, sir.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” Zuko says.

It doesn't make sense to be angry, but he's angry and humiliated, naked in Jee's arms, wanting him, hating him, stinking of vomit.

Jee helps him to the washbasin, where Zuko rinses his mouth and cleans off his face. The smeared face in the mirror looks mostly dead. He pushes the older man away when he tries to help.

“Go put some clothes on,” Zuko says, averting his eyes.

He feels his way to the bed and curls up again, watching blankly as Jee, half-dressed, begins to scrub the floor. He should apologize, Zuko knows, but he's afraid to open his mouth again, knowing the kind of poison that comes out of it.

He doesn’t mean the vomit.

Jee looks almost serene, cleaning sick off the floor, the soft plash of water and the hissing sound of the scrub-brush. Zuko hates him for it. He's tranquil, uncomplaining, like this isn't an indignity—like nothing terrible has ever happened to him. Probably nothing has. He’s the fucking unshakeable man, all military calm. He barely feels anything at all.

Jee climbs into bed behind him, arms settling so gently around his waist that Zuko can't find the words to push him back. He's one long ache, from his head to the tip of his spine, and movement is pain.

“It's tomorrow, sir.”

“I know.”

“Do you intend to—”

“There’s no _do-you-intend-to_. I _have_ to. I don't have a choice.” 

Jee presses his lips very softly to the back of Zuko’s neck, until he’s paralyzed with electricity. He kisses and pulls carefully back.

“You could appoint a deputy, sir.”

Zuko tenses.

“I'm not a coward, Jee. I don't send other people to fight my battles.”

“But this isn't your battle, sir. It's the crew's too.”

“The crew hates me.”

“Not as much as they hate Zhao, sir,” Jee says helpfully. He rubs Zuko's back and says, in a quieter voice, “You know I'll have to tell your uncle.”

“Before I fight it or after I die?”

“Sir.”

“You can't tell me you think I'll win.” 

Silence.

“You'll have to tell him after,” Zuko says, voice hoarse. “If you tell him before he'll stop me.” He pauses. “I'm sorry, Jee.”

He is sorry, really. It’s a terrible thing to ask of anyone, to make them part of the worst day of someone else’s life, and he’s a coward, probably, for asking at all. 

“If you deputize—” Jee begins.

“Bring it up again and I'll burn something you care about.”

Jee is quiet for a while after that.

“The ritual bath, before the fight. Would you... would you give me the honor of bathing you, sir?”

Zuko is thankful that his back is turned. His face spasms vaguely.

“You're the only person who would want to look at me.”

Jee kisses his ear, the damaged one. Then he moves down the nape of Zuko's neck, slowly, with his warm mouth.

Oh, fuck.

“Self-pity doesn't suit you, sir.”

His hand settles on Zuko's cock again and Zuko doubles over, trying to suppress a whine that comes out anyway in a voice he doesn’t recognize. Jee strokes him, still kissing him with that mouth that lights up his spine. He comes almost immediately. Then Jee's warm hands are rubbing his back, kneading kisses into his spine, making his whole body flare. He can’t remember being warm. It’s like a light that shines somewhere in the distance, his childhood in the Fire Nation tucked behind a faceless chain of snowy ports.

“God, you're wonderful, sir,” Jee breathes.

What is this, even. 

“How did you know that—” Zuko falters on the words, poison again. _How did you know that something was wrong with you_ , he was going to say. “That you wanted to be with men,” he finishes lamely.

“How did _you_ know, sir?”

“I didn’t,” Zuko says. “I don’t.”

To his credit, the older man doesn’t try to debate him. 

“I saw someone and I wanted him,” Jee says. “These things are really very simple, sir.”

“Did you grow up on a boat?” he blurts out.

“Sir, boats don't make men—”

“Shut up,” Zuko says. His face is burning. “I know that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jee’s hands settle on his ribs, tracing the lines of his muscles, somehow avoiding all the parts that hurt. For a moment he wonders, panicking, if Jee can see it: the massive hole in the center of him, the ravage-edged thing that eats light. 

“You can tell me anything, sir,” the older man says. “If you wanted to. I don't talk.”

“I think it'll be worse if I win,” Zuko says suddenly. He hadn't realized it was true until he said it. But it's true, isn't it? “If I lose at least things will be different."

Jee is silent again, for a while.

“Come here, sir.”

Zuko’s already here, but he knows what Jee means. Carefully he rolls over, tucking his head into Jee’s chest, and lets himself vanish for a while.

“I know what it's like, sir. It's terrible to be young.”

“I'm not young.” 

“What is it you hate so much about being young?”

Zuko doesn't answer.

“Sir. I won't presume to dictate your choices. But I think there are more options than you imagine. When you get older, you begin to see—”

“Please let me sleep, Jee,” Zuko says, and doesn’t.


	9. Outline of a disaster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here we go, the agni kai. I may not respond to your comments but I love getting them! Kudos deeply appreciated.

The morning is cold and foggy, the ships all floating darkly in the harbor like the outline of a disaster. Jee guides him to the washbasin and stirs the water until it's blazing warm, thick with steam.

“Sir.”

Zuko eases in, feeling feverish. The sting of the other day’s drinking is still in him, not enough to keep him satisfied, and he misses what thoughtlessness was like. Jee lifts his arm and runs a wet cloth along his skin, his fingers keeping it blazing.

Maybe it’ll be nice to die if it comes like this: not a brand to his face but his whole body falling away, shucked off like water.

“How are you feeling?” 

“God, Jee.”

Jee lifts his other arm—the model of decorum—and begins to work away the dirt, the stale perspiration that comes with staying up all night sure you're going to die. All afternoon he had been retching, not from the alcohol but from the fear, and the shame of being so afraid. He avoided his uncle’s eyes, told him he was sick, and still he could feel through his skin that Iroh thought he was drinking again. He had never been so humiliated in his life.

“Is this all right, sir?”

“It’s fine.” 

Jee moves gradually down, washing Zuko's shoulder blades, the ridges of his back, the part of his stomach that still twinges when it's touched, because he's ruined himself. When he flinches Jee bends forward and holds him tightly.

“I'm getting your shirt wet,” Zuko mumbles.

“Tough shit,” Jee says. “Sir.”

He nudges into Zuko's mouth, hands sliding down his ribs and into the water. When he reaches down he warms the water so quickly it flares slightly.

“Are you warm enough, sir?”

“I'm not a child, Jee.”

And he isn't now, is he? He's going to fight to the death. Zuko must be an adult now, by default—he’s finally gotten what he wanted—but he feels six years old again, hiding behind the curtains with a hammering heart.

Jee kisses Zuko's cheek firmly before straightening up.

“Now lean back, sir.”

He unties Zuko's ponytail and lathers his hands with oil-soap, carding through the dark hair. The pads of his fingers sink into his scalp. Zuko has two memories of having his hair washed, each distinctly different. The first is his mother, combing out the knots as he sits in her lap. The second is Iroh attempting to wash his hair without pulling the new skin off his face. There was blood in the water. After that, Zuko told himself he would never let anyone touch him again.

Which worked out so well, obviously.

“Where do you keep your bands, sir?”

“Under the desk. There's a panel in the floor. Jee…”

“Yes?”

_I don't want to do this. I'm so tired._

“Fuck it,” Zuko says. “I'm ready.”

—

The snow is coming down, his fire sputtering.

It's hard to get a grip in the snow. The world is always dissolving and reforming in front of him.The ring of spectators, mostly local sailors and idle merchants, is here and then it’s nowhere. Zhao's mocking smile is there and then it's gone, a flash of heat grazing his side. Zuko needs to get close and hold him down, so he knows what he's looking at.

Of course, this is also dumb and extremely dangerous.

When he lunges in there's no grace in the move, and Zhao laughs, sidestepping him easily.

“Have you had too much, my prince?”

“You wish,” Zuko gasps. He swipes meltwater from his eyes.

A wall of flame hits him in the chest. Zuko barely counters, throwing up a block that scatters the fire, reducing it to pure heat. It takes the skin off his knuckles. He’s leaving blood in the snow.

“When I mark you you're mine,” Zhao hisses.

Ignoring the sting in his hands, Zuko ducks down and wheels his feet, shooting off flares. Zhao stumbles and the prince moves closer, pursuing his advantage. A second thrust and Zhao's feet slip from under him—it's the blow or a patch of ice the blow loosened to water—and Zuko is on top of him, hands pinning his shoulders.

“I shouldn't be surprised,” Zhao wheezes. “You're used to this.”

Zuko's face burns.

“How dare you—” 

“I've known for years,” Zhao says, calm for someone with a set of blazing fingers at his throat. “Your perversion stinks to high heaven, my beautiful prince.”

Zuko falters for a moment. He looks to the crowd, trying to find purchase on a familiar face, but it's all white shapes and dark coats in the snow, the sunrise glazing the shipyard orange. Zhao takes advantage and flips him. Zuko scrabbles for his throat.

“You think there's honor in this?” Zhao hisses, eyes bulging. His face and neck are smudged with Zuko’s blood.

“I'm not here for my honor,” Zuko says, and is surprised to find, as the words leave his mouth, that this is true. He's here for vengeance and to slake his own petty anger, and he doesn't want to die.

He pushes up from the ground, shifting his full weight up and over. Zhao falls hard on his elbows, wind knocked out of him, and Zuko scrabbles upright, hands blazing. Zhao closes his eyes. This is the winner's blow.

And Zuko doesn't want it.

“I'm saving this for you, Zhao,” he says. “If I hear about you impugning my honor or my family's, calling me a drunk or a pervert, I'm going to melt the stupid grin off your face.”

Zhao laughs in disbelief.

“Coward!” he crows. “Coward! What a farce this has been.”

Zuko turns sharply on his heels and exits the arena. A boiling wall of fire hits his back.

He’s sure it does, but it doesn’t.

When he wheels around there’s a body crumpled at Zhao’s feet, the stink of burning hair and burning flesh. He’d know the shape of him anywhere.


	10. Imaginary war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to leave you on a cliffhanger last time--hopefully it was clear who the body was. 
> 
> We're about wrapping up now. Some erotics ahead in chapter after this one ;)

The medical clinicin Ishima is the first time Zuko can remember not sleeping on a ship. It’s a simple bed, low to the floor, and he feels it heave on a phantom sea every time he turns. The glass of the window is so thick it’s warped, and a gray light shines down on the room, the business of the port reduced to the thinnest suggestions.

There is a hole in Jee—the simplest way to say it. A hole in his right side. The burn is massive, greedy, and it ate him down to the bone. He has to sleep uncovered so that the new flesh doesn’t bond with his shirt or a blanket, and he’s cold. He isn’t fully conscious, but anyone can tell; he keeps shivering and plucking at the gauze. The healers don’t want Zuko here but here he is, curling against his back with tremendous caution, catching his hands and kissing his fingers, as if Jee knows the difference.

The smell is terrible. It’s the smell of a body that’s been opened, mingled with the stink of opium that keeps him quiet. When the healers work on Jee they breathe through their mouths and daub camphor under their noses, and even then they work quickly. They ask how Zuko can stand it. (He doesn’t answer, of course. He glares at them.) Twice a day they peel off the old dressings, cauterize the blackened tissue, ease ointments over the hole. Every time Jee cries out and fights, and as Zuko grips his hands he wonders what imaginary war he’s losing. His face is twisted up with pain. He must believe he’s alone.

Once Zuko says _I love you_ quickly, experimentally, and finds with relief and disappointment that Jee is out cold. But his heart keeps hammering like he'll be found out. He doesn’t care if the healers know, or the sailors who traffic in and out of the clinic. He wouldn’t even care if Zhao walked in with a sneer on his lips. He just doesn’t want Jee to know. 

Because does love this man. He's sick and sort of old but Zuko loves him.

For days Zuko doesn't think about drinking at all.

—

When his uncle walks in Zuko’s pressed against the lieutenant’s back. It’s very obvious what’s happening here, what has happened—their fingers are intertwined, legs tucked together—but Iroh has the good grace not to look surprised. He sits on an empty bed and folds his hands into his sleeves, waiting.

“How is he feeling?” Iroh asks, finally.

“I don’t know,” Zuko mumbles. It wasn’t the question he was expecting. “I mean, he isn’t in a position to—he’s not able—”

He should get up and talk with his uncle like a civilized human being, but he has the irrational fear that if he lets go of Jee he’ll die. Jee will die and Zuko will die. He knows it doesn’t make any sense, but he knows it in his bones. Very gingerly he sits up, one hand still touching Jee’s back.

“It’s bad,” he says. “Uncle, it’s really bad.”

“I don’t know why you kept this from me.”

He means the agni kai, or maybe the fact that his nephew has been fucking his lieutenant. Maybe, easily, both.

Iroh’s eyebrows are raised slightly, waiting for him to explain.

“I don't want to hunt the Avatar anymore,” Zuko says instead. “I don't want to be cold and wet anymore. And I don't want to get on another boat as long as I live.”

“I don't know if that's practical,” his uncle says mildly, and Zuko's heart falls. “For one thing, I don't know how you'll ever get off Ishima this time of year without a boat.”

Zuko starts laughing, tears creeping down his face. Iroh sweeps him up in a hug.

“You're not a child anymore,” Iroh murmurs. “I know that. I apologize for treating you as one. If it makes any sense, for both depriving and indulging you.”

"It wasn't your fault."

“It was,” Iroh says simply. His eyes shift to Jee, thin and ravaged on the bed. He looks like he's been dropped and broke where he fell. “He may not be the same again, you know.”

“I wasn’t,” Zuko says. “I mean, I'm not.” Gingerly he touches his face, like the wound didn't seal up years ago. 

“I’ve often regretted that we don’t have the master healers of the Water Nation at our disposal, having wiped them out,” Iroh says, stroking his beard. “He may not walk again. At best he’ll be able to limp. The scar tissue is going to save him, but at a cost.”

“Not everyone has to walk,” Zuko says defensively.

“Be honest with me, nephew. Did he…”

Iroh trails off and Zuko looks at him, not comprehending, until he does.

“No!" he sputters. "No, God no."

"Because if for one moment you felt... coerced..."

"No. Uncle, I—I wanted to.I don't know why.”

“I let you grow up alone. It isn't so unusual to want company.” 

Right, Zuko thinks. _Company_ is the word for what he's done.

—

It's a muddled dark room and a muddled face, white like he hasn't had sun for ages. A hand grips his, painfully hard, and when he inhales everything that's happened to him is happening again, and he's on fire.

“Are you awake?”

He would know the rasp anywhere.

“You're going to break my hand,” he whispers.

Lips on his lips, hands cradling his jaw.

“You're awake.”

He feels the fire on his side again, sees it flare up at Zuko's back— _Zuko_ —

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“God.” A choked laugh. “I can't believe you.”

On the edge of Zuko’s voice he's swallowed up again and when he fights out of it—a black veil he keeps clawing through, gasping for air—his mouth is painfully dry and his throat is sealed. Someone lifts him up and drips water into his mouth until the hold breaks.

“How long has it been,” he asks, in a voice that's mostly friction.

Lips pressed against his forehead, hands in his hair.

“I don't know. I haven't been keeping track. I—I'm not sure what day it is.”

He opens his eyes and he's walloped again—by the enormity of the room, after so many hours trapped alone in his head, and by how beautiful the boy is. He's _beautiful_ , leaning over him, his face so serious, the steady gold of his eyes.

“God, it smells terrible in here.”

Zuko laughs nervously. 

“It smells like an animal's dying.”

The laughter stops.

“Ah,” says Jee.

“You're going to be okay,” he sputters. “I swear. I'll take care of you. It won’t—”

“Come here.”

Zuko curls up against him, feeling warm, sweaty, and fragile. Carefully he slides his hand around Zuko's. The boy stiffens, then eases. He lets Jee run his thumb over his fingers.

“You don't owe me anything. Okay? I would do it again.”

"I can’t—“

“You could do nothing for the rest of your life and it would be worth it,” Jee continues. “It would be worth it because he was behaving like a brute and you had been—you had been wonderful.”

His throat seals up again and he ends on a whisper that rips his mouth. Zuko gets the bowl and the cloth, feeds him water until the gagging stops.

“You were wonderful,” Jee repeats.

And he was: a flashing wheel in the snow, burning feet, the ice hissing underneath him as he parried Zhao's blasts. Tucked away in the crowd, blinking snow from his eyes, Jee had been a complicated kind of proud, teacherly affection thrumming with erotic love.

“I want to, though.”

“Hm?”

“Take care of you.” Zuko kisses his dry mouth. It's like being stung. “I want to take care of you.”

Jee slides his hands over Zuko’s smooth back. It amuses him a little, that he’s somehow both half-dead and getting hard. He doesn’t really have the energy for not-dying and also getting off. Not today.

“Quite frankly,” he says softly, “you're going to go on to be important and I'll be the old man who took a blow for you. And I'm satisfied with that.”

Zuko is quiet for a long time.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be satisfied,” he says.


	11. Any distance from his skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello darlings. We're almost purely in the back half of that hurt/comfort tag here--it feels really good. Let me know if you like it. 
> 
> It's funny to me that I really thought I could make this a no-strings-attached transaction at the beginning, in the model of the classic Zuko/Jee fics. I'm such a softie. 
> 
> I hate song fics, but when I think about Zuko trying to be a normal sexual being, I think about Silversun Pickups's "Panic Switch" and probably also Alice in Chains's "Down in a Hole." Just, uh, FYI.

The crew have been rooming in the local inn, the ship swaying lightly at the dock. In the mornings, when the sea is scabbed over with ice, Zuko takes walks around the harbor, watching the dockworkers break the hulls free with their swinging hammers. His face covered, he could be anyone. He examines his small, beaten ship almost clinically, like he has no investment in it anymore.

He’s won them, all of them—the crew and the ship and his uncle—and now he pays almost no attention to them. He’s avoided considering what comes next. When his uncle visits, he says they’ve been told to await orders when their lieutenant has recovered. They have not been told, Iroh adds mildly, that Jee will no longer be their lieutenant.

“Uncle.”

“It’s entirely inappropriate, Prince Zuko.”

“He didn’t—”

“This is not a punishment. It has nothing to do with right or wrong, or with—“ Iroh chooses his words carefully—“affection.”

Zuko looks at him, stony-faced.

“This is a question of the chain of command. Jee is your subordinate.” He pauses. “He was your subordinate.”

Zuko’s eyes twitch to Jee, still knocked out after his last round of medications—shirt wrung out with sweat, opium paste smeared under his gums. He can’t hear anything, probably. Zuko takes his hand and tries not to twist it with rage.

“This cannot be a surprise to you, nephew.”

“I won’t talk about this with you.”

Iroh tilts his head, impossible to read.

“You know I’ll always love you,” he says finally. “I will always, always love you.”

It’s as close as he’ll get to answering the question neither of them knows how to ask.

—

“I want to be inside you,” Jee says.

They’re spooled in bed, Zuko running his thumb over Jee’s hand, breathing in the smell of his hair. He still smells like himself, somewhere deep, underneath all of these shockingly medical smells.

“Hm?”

“Let me come inside you.”

It’s been three weeks since the accident. Jee is able to sit up and eat soup slowly, although he can only use his left hand. The new skin is beginning to come in beneath the blood and yellow waste that come away with his old wrappings. And he’s awake for longer periods, which is a mixed blessing: Zuko sees his eyes light up when he sees him, but he also sees the panic that sets in quickly on its heels, as the pain overwhelms him again, before he masters his face.

“Are you sure?” Zuko asks quietly.

When they kiss his mouth is dry and sour; Jee winces, asks for water. He swishes it with a certain set to his mouth, like even his teeth hurt.

There’s a bottle of oil Zuko has been keeping under the bed. He found it in the supply room. It has the weight of linseed oil and doesn’t smell particularly medicinal. He takes it out now, rolling it in his hands.

It’s perverse and adolescent of him, he thinks, wanting Jee when Jee is still an open wound. But he always wants Jee. He’s spent days tucked into the older man’s chest. He loves the way Jee reaches for him when he climbs into bed, how his calloused hands slip immediately under Zuko’s shirt like he can’t bear any distance from his skin, how he falls asleep with his stubbled face bent into Zuko’s neck. 

It’s been nourishing, whatever this is, like there’s a hole in him too that’s sealing up whenever he wakes in the early hours of the morning, dawn fog pinking the window, and Jee is still there, still cradling him like he’s proud to know him, like he’s worth anything at all. Even when Jee’s asleep he’s extending his protection over him, assurance against unhappiness and terror.

Because it was terror, living the way he had lived. Zuko recognizes this now.

Zuko straddles Jee and eases him in, hands pressed against the wall behind Jee's head. Jee hisses slightly.

“Don't be an idiot if it hurts," Zuko says.

"It hurts no matter what,” Jee reminds him, with a cosmic exhaustion. “It hurts if I'm lying still.” He doesn't sound bitter. He sounds like he's lived forever.

Zuko sinks down, letting the warmth of him in.

They go slowly, Zuko's eyes flicking between Jee's face and the wrappings on his side, looking for the betrayal of blood. Jee's eyes are closed, and when his hands settle on Zuko's waist his whole face changes in a way that feels unbearably intimate. He looks young.

Zuko doesn't care about anything, but he cares about him. 

“Jee.”

“Hm?”

Jee opens his eyes. He has a look in his face that's kind, almost worshipful, and he touches the younger man delicately, knuckles brushing Zuko’s jaw. A jolt of pleasure rises up, spearing him.

“Am I hurting you?”

Zuko shakes his head.

“No. It’s—”

Jee’s knuckles graze his cheek, so gently.

“ _God_ , you're gorgeous,” Jee says. His voice is almost gone.

He kneads into Jee until the older man stiffens sharply and comes, tears of pain in his eyes that Zuko wouldn't dare mention. He slides free and pulls Jee into his lap, burying a kiss in his neck. He smells like ash. Underneath, the slightest tang of the old turpentine. Salt.

“If anyone tries to hurt you I'll kill them,” Zuko mumbles.

“I love you too,” Jee says.


End file.
